Lehigh University's new mission: space, the final frontier

In high-tech team-up, school will get a hand in James Webb scope.

Lehigh University researchers will work with NASA on what some scientists hail as the most important astronomy project of the decade -- the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Why Lehigh? Because throughout the world, there are only four or five electron microscopes that can clearly see and photograph individual atoms, and Lehigh has two of them.

The Bethlehem school also has a state-of-the-art nanotechnology lab, which permits researchers to view and determine properties of particles so small and of metallic coatings so thin you can count their atoms.

Under an agreement announced Tuesday, Lehigh will give researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration free access to the school's nanotechnology and electron microscopy facilities.

In return, Lehigh professors get to work on developing technologies for future Mars rovers and spacecraft, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope -- Hubble's successor and the most expensive space science mission under development at NASA.

"It looks like nanotechnology will play a big role in space exploration, and we get to be a part of that," said Martin Harmer, director of Lehigh's Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.

Scheduled to launch in 2012, the 6.8-ton Webb observatory will fly a million miles from Earth to look for light from the earliest stars formed after the Big Bang, which astronomers say marked the beginning of the universe.

NASA has acknowledged the $3.5 billion project is $1 billion over budget.

One way to save time and money is to use university facilities for some of the research. The Webb telescope is being built at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"It takes time and money to build labs like Lehigh's," NASA researcher Brian Jamieson said in a written statement. "Agreements like this one let NASA benefit from their investment while giving something back to the school."

Since the late 1960s, Lehigh has nurtured a strong interest in electron microscopy and has more than half a dozen professors skilled in that area, said spokesman Kurt Pfitzer.

Local companies that have used Lehigh's electron microscopy facilities or expressed interest in them include Air Products and Chemicals in Trexlertown and Orasure Technologies in Bethlehem.

Lehigh's facilities have also attracted international attention from professors at other universities and scientists at companies such as DuPont and IBM who can use the microscopes through an arrangement with a consortium.

Lehigh's electron microscopes are unique because they are "aberration-corrected," meaning they fix an imbalance in the lenses so researchers can see images half the width of an atom. Older-generation electron microscopes see only clusters of five or six atoms.

Chris Kiely, director of Lehigh's Nanoscale Characterization Laboratory, has described the improvement as "fitting a microscope with a new pair of reading glasses, giving it 20-20 vision."

An engineer from JEOL USA Inc., which sold the new microscope, spent a year at Lehigh fine-tuning it.

NASA's project will be the first to go under it. Lehigh scientists will load samples NASA needs to examine. From Maryland, NASA's team will then be able to adjust the microscope with a click of a computer mouse and view the results over the Internet.

Using Lehigh's other lab facilities, NASA will test how cameras and film for the Webb telescope and Mars rovers will operate in extremely cold temperatures.

A National Academy of Science panel ranked the Webb telescope as the most important NASA astronomy project this decade. The Webb is expected to replace the Hubble, which could encounter crippling mechanical failures as early as 2007.

NASA would like to avoid some of the problems that have plagued the Hubble since its launch 15 years ago.

One of the many instruments on the Webb Telescope is a near infrared spectrograph, a special camera with millions of tiny shutters too small for the naked eye to see. It will be used to study galaxy and star formation, and more.

"These shutters need to work perfectly," said Richard Vinci, a Lehigh materials science and engineering professor, whose expertise is in "the mechanical behavior and reliability of very small things."

"Sometimes when things are made very small, they behave differently than expected, especially at temperatures of 370 degrees below zero," Vinci said.

The collaboration with NASA marks the second time this year that Lehigh has worked with the agency. In March, undergraduates analyzed debris from the shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated upon re-entry into the atmosphere in 2003.

The students recommended NASA use a better type of aluminum for future space vehicles.

The latest collaboration will help the university learn how to make its electron microscopes more accessible from remote sites, Vinci said.

"We have these brand new instruments that are capable of doing things no one has been able to do before," he said. "We like people to give us challenging problems and help solve them."

The Baltimore Sun contributed to this story.

WHY LEHIGH

UNIVERSITY?

It is one of the few places in the U.S. with an aberration-corrected electron microscope, and the only place in the world with two such devices.

It has a state of the art nanotechnology lab, which permits researchers to view and measure properties of nano-particles, materials that are so thin you can count the number of atoms in them.